


the un-guiding light

by kimaracretak



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/F, Pining, Post-Darkening of Valinor, okay maybe it's spider skin but ungoliant is still sad, sad universes-bound-in-human-skin being sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-14 19:55:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17514980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: Ungoliant waits for Arien's fall.





	the un-guiding light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meritmut](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meritmut/gifts).



> The sun was in my eyes  
> I was stricken blind  
> I believed I could see through the dark  
> As I followed _the un-guiding light_  
>  — 'The Sun Was In My Eyes: Part One', Woods of Ypres

There is a flame writhing in the deep of what passes for Ungoliant's belly.

There is more than one there, in truth, she has consumed - _will_ consume - all such light that the world that is not yet a world entire will ever see. But something persists, some light persists, stars that have not yet fallen and Maia who have not yet come to her side.

You must be patient, to hunt. Ungoliant thinks of the last fruit of Laurelin streaming across the sky in the shape of a woman and she wishes she did not need such patience. Her jaws are empty, her claws are empty, and the whole of her aches with the need to bring Arien down to the ground so that light may lie with dark and the world may be remade once more.

The light was once the wrongness of the world, but now it is scattered, as is the dark, and Ungoliant drips silk and casts her eyes to the sky where Arien flies as if she has no care at all in the world, as if the separation of light from dark, of presence from void, is something that she perhaps even cherishes.

Melkor had failed to grasp her, Ungoliant had watched him try and knew him for a fool. She had been proud of Arien then, in a secret place lodged somewhere underneath her left claw and the first star she had ever swallowed. It had seemed right, in a time when there was very little rightness to be found, that Arien would be hers instead. And yet as days pass upon days and Arien's rise and fall across the sky settles into a pattern fit to bore even the most patient of hunters, Ungoliant begins to wonder if she too is not a fool, to think Arien might one day return to her.

There is a flame writhing in the deep of what passes for Ungoliant's belly and she is growing afraid, for the first time in her life, that it might want to pierce through her thorax and into the sky to join with the ribbons of fire streaming through Arien's hair and there remain, never to bring the spirit back to her.

It flickers between life and death following the motion of the newborn sun in Arien's hands, the rise and fall that so much life is slowly becoming beholden to. There are teeth somewhere deep inside her that once shredded trees from leaf to root, teeth that had once helped her suck the marrow of the world from its centre.

And now she is bound to wait. Now those teeth click closed around nothing, and her mandibles cut restlessly through wood and soil and empty air. There is not much left for one who cannot fly, who wants only another whose feet will never again touch the ground.

There is to be a fall. There must always be a fall, now, this Ungoliant knows. She was not the first one to fall but she was eager, and there was no joy quite like the feeling of the universe rushing past her, every piece of stardust against every centimetre of her skin, no freedom much greater than the darkness from which she plucked the very threads of herself.

It can be no bad thing, to wish that for her lover. It is only right that Arien should see how much of the dark she could drink and still carry the sun, that she have a black flame in her belly to match the light in Ungoliant's. It is no small trick that, to be trusted to know just how much of your opposite, your lover you can take in and leave just enough of her for the universe to keep turning. Ungoliant has had many turns of the new sun to hone her sense for hunger, and soon enough the balance will even.

But Ungoliant has a hunter's patience, now, and she spins and spins, blankets and tapestries and nets all waiting to catch Arien, to be ready for the day the light spills too far over and runs into the underground like sweeter blood. One day Arien's thin threads, so much more fragile than spider's silk, will snap. One day she will tire of holding the sun between her lips and she will bite down, and find there the dark heart Ungoliant has left her.

She need only weave. She need only wait. The ages slip into her silks, and the flame in her belly grows teeth, and Arien drifts ever closer across the sky.


End file.
